Start up
Build up your venture idea.
Learn more
Isabella Bank Institute for Entrepreneurship
We are a dedicated institute for student entrepreneurs across campus and beyond. We aim to maximize your success by fostering your entrepreneurial mindset, promote inter-disciplinary collaboration and provide support for the creation and development of your new ventures. Jumpstart your ideas and get involved today!
Tune in for excitement!
Passion. Potential. Pitches. Don't miss any of the 2025 New Venture Challenge excitement.
Tune in Friday, April 11 at 1 p.m. for great ideas and fierce competition. Then, join the judges, mentors, spectators and teams as they see who is going home with thousands of dollars in venture financing. The awards broadcast begins at 6:30 p.m. and one team will walk away as the overall best venture.
Start your entrepreneurial journey
Central Michigan University’s College of Business Administration is the home of the Isabella Bank Institute for Entrepreneurship and the first Department of Entrepreneurship in the state of Michigan. We are a student-centric hub where experiential, curricular, and external entrepreneurial opportunities intersect.
Our mission is to maximize student success by fostering a campus-wide entrepreneurial mindset that promotes inter-disciplinary collaboration and the creation of new ventures.
We aim to create innovative programming, boost cross-campus and ecosystem collaboration and provide a comprehensive mentoring program.
Our institute provides extracurricular opportunities and is open to all undergraduate and graduate CMU students.
Student opportunities
- Meet experienced alumni, faculty, entrepreneurs, investors, and other business and political leaders.
- Learn practical skills, innovative thinking, and connect with mentors and entrepreneurial resources.
- Attend skill-building workshops and compete in pitch competitions and Hackathons.
- Take part in special scholarship programs and travel experiences.
- Pitch your venture at our signature New Venture Challenge event and compete for up to $20,000 in cash awards.
Find your path
Are you interested in becoming an entrepreneur?
Every journey is unique. Explore the opportunities that interest you.
Retired CMU history professor publishes book on inflation
by
Sarah Buckley
After decades of falling or stable consumer prices, inflation came as a nasty surprise to Americans in 1910. A new book by retired Central Michigan University history faculty member David I. Macleod portrays what followed.
Inflation Decade, 1910-1920: Americans Confront the High Cost of Living (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) shows that modest increases in living costs spurred mass protests and myriad—sometimes odd—remedial schemes between 1910 and 1914. Then as now, consumer discontent hurt the incumbent president, William Howard Taft, and his party. Republicans lost control of Congress and the White House by 1912.
Macleod says Democrats soon faced worsening problems. Wartime demand and inflationary fiscal policy doubled consumer prices from 1915 to 1920, triggering waves of strikes, food riots by immigrant housewives, middle-class resentment of falling real incomes, and elite fears of revolution. Food prices dominated consumer concerns; yet farmers wanted high commodity prices. Accordingly, both sides excoriated meat packers, wholesalers, and retailers.
Fumbling responses by Woodrow Wilson’s administration and the newly formed Federal Reserve led to hesitant wartime price restraints, punitive postwar raids and prosecutions, and a now-familiar fallback—high interest rates in 1920. Political disaster for Democrats and deep recession in 1921 followed.
The book includes an epilogue that traces continuing cost-of-living issues and changes in the consumer price index down to 2020.
Macleod retired from the Department of History, World Languages, and Cultures after 42 years in 2012. He says the book follows from teaching and research he did while still at CMU.
"Thanks to the CMU library's excellent microfilm and book holdings, online sources available through the library, and help from the interlibrary loan staff, I was able to do a remarkably large share of the research right here in Mt. Pleasant."
Signature Programs
Isabella Bank Institute for Entrepreneurship
Explore special opportunities to learn new skills and travel the world.
Compete & Win
New Venture Challenge 2025
Present your venture and win BIG at the New Venture Challenge.
Build your skills
Workshops and events
Boost your entrepreneurial skills through our workshops, mentor meetups and pitch competitions.
Develop your ideas
IDEA Den
Learn about the entrepreneurship makerspace on campus in Grawn Hall.
Ready, Set, Pitch!
Make-A-Pitch 2024
Present a 2-minute pitch at the Make-A-Pitch Competition and you could win prizes and bragging rights!
Meet Mentors
Mentorship and support
Connect with mentors and faculty who are here to support the next generation of CMU entrepreneurs.
Support students
Make an impact
Are you a CMU alum looking to support CMU student entrepreneurs? Learn how you can support or donate to the Entrepreneurship Institute.
View our programming newsletter
Alumni give back to students through mentorship, real-world experiences
The Wakeling Gendron Entrepreneurial Scholars program wrapped its first cohort this academic year.
Students compete to win cash prizes at the New Venture Challenge
Pitched 40 ventures at NMV Challenge, Friday, April 19, CMU. Judges awarded $100,000 in cash prizes.
Wakeling Gendron Scholars make a life-changing trip to Texas
Wakeling and Gendron Scholars attended SXSW in Texas, meeting industry leaders and gaining entrepreneurial insights.
Business barriers lead CMU students to a new venture
Justin Ashman and Philip Mundt won Central Michigan University's New Venture Competition with their 3-D printing operation, Form Further.
